Your leader lays the blame for the previous government's failed attempt to drastically cut civil service redundancy pay at my union's door (The many, not the few, 6 July).

You say we "ultimately scuppered" the previous deal "to trim the biggest redundancy payments" – which is true if you mean we proved in the high court that it was unlawful to cut tens of thousands of pounds from the terms for existing staff without their agreement.

The ruling means the government should not have imposed changes. But this is precisely what the new government now wants to do. But to achieve this it intends to introduce new legislation to get around the uncomfortable situation that the law currently protects the government's staff from this kind of abuse of power.

You blame the PCS's "refusal to budge", and state that "other unions yesterday signalled a readiness to reopen that discussion". We have always stood ready to negotiate and we wrote again to the Cabinet Office immediately after the judgment to offer fresh talks, but received only the most cursory response – then heard nothing more until the most recent announcement.

You also say, apparently without irony, that unions would do well to "borrow a line from the Conservative manifesto – we're all in this together". I'm sure your readers understand that it is this expression of solidarity upon which the union movement is built, and it is the Tories who have appropriated it.

And I would hope that – faced with a budget that penalises the low-paid and unemployed with a VAT hike to 20%, cuts to benefits and tax credits, and a public sector pay freeze – your readers already recognise the sheer hypocrisy of that particular piece of Tory spin. Unions like ours unite public and private sector workers, and we reject the government's attempt to play one off against the other. The real divide is between executives in the boardroom who secure massive pensions for themselves, and their workforces who are suffering repeated cuts.

The facts are these: the average civil service wage is just £22,800 and, far from fostering cushy jobs for life, the civil service has suffered six years of continued job cuts. When civil servants are made redundant their average payout is not even close to the eye-watering figures being bandied about by the government. And when they retire, their average pension is just £4,200 – more than 100,000 people currently receive a civil service pension of £2,000 or less.

These are not even copper-plated terms, still less gold-plated, or any other lazy tabloidese you care to come up with.

When we talk about protecting public sector terms and conditions, it is not "characteristic kneejerk oppositionism" or only because we believe workers have a right not to be forced to bend to the will of their employer – be that the government or any other. It is also because we know it is both unfair and counterproductive economically to drive more people into poverty in retirement.

We would welcome a fair discussion in the media about these issues, and about the alternatives to cuts – including some, like tackling the widening tax gap, that the Lib Dems once supported. Sadly this doesn't always happen, and it isn't necessarily our fault.